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LECTU RES 



ON 



Physical Astronomy 






V 
By MATTHEW HOPKINS. 



Delivered before the Austin Library Association, Tuesday 
Evening, November 25, 1873. 







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LECTURES ON PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



Lecture I. 



INTRODUCTORY, AND ON THE IMMUTABILITY 

OF TYPE. 

I offer no apology for volunteering these lectures. If 
I did not believe that I could amuse, instruct and interest 
you, I would not be here now. Apart from this, I may 
desire to lecture elsewhere, and I would master all of 
hesitation and embarrassment, which, no matter from 
what cause they may arise, are alike fatal to the elucida- 
tion and demonstration of difficult problems. But, if I 
could pour out the burden of my mind as a river, each 
drop a concentrated thought worthy of a niche in the temple 
of fame, I ought still to hesitate, both in the order and 
matter of delivery, for I deal with problems which have 
baffled the genius and exhausted the energies of the 
brightest intellects of which history makes note. 

Besides, I war with a faith, for such the hypotheses of 
Newton have become ; and he who would strike Baal in 
his temple, should strike with mailed hand, and be ar- 
mored in triple steel ; and I, neither mathematician nor 
astronomer, come to you armed alone with the faculties 
which God hath given me — that reason which I share in 
common with yourselves — and to that power alone I ap- 
peal. 

And do not imagine that you are not competent to sit 
in judgment ; for although truth, it is said, lies hidden in 
the bottom of a deep well, when brought to the surface, 
no star upon the brow of night shines more brightly; it 
cannot be mistaken for the uncertain lights which may 
surround it. 

Nor need you apprehend that I shall burthen you with 
scientific terms. The nomenclature of science is a species 
of knowledge to which I have not aspired. The volume I 



2 Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 

have studied has been the volume of nature, ^nd God has 
not written his revelations there either in Latin or Greek. 

How do we reason % and wherein lies the difference be- 
tween the reasoning power of the civilized, intellectual 
and educated man, the savage, and the brute % Volumes 
have been written upon the philosophy of thought, and it 
is not my intention to enter into a diquisition upon this 
branch of philosophy. But if we would reason together, 
it is necessary that we should reason from the same stand- 
point. 

Our natures are emotional, passional, rational. The 
passional and emotional part of our natures need not be 
discussed. Independent of the five original senses, we 
are conscious of the possession of many other senses — 
faculties — to which the first five are subordinated. 

Phrenology, whether founded in truth or error, has done 
much in the subdivision of mental phenomena, for this 
branch of philosophy. There is little doubt now in 
the minds of thoughtful men, that as to the four great 
divisions, passions, emotions, pe^eptive and reflective 
organs, the location or seat of tm3 brain in which they 
have been placed by phrenologists, have been correctly 
mapped, and that the capacity and power of these organs 
depend : First, Upon organic size and energy. Second, 
Upon exercise or education. Third, Upon the necessities 
for use or the circumstances which demand their exercise. 
And it becomes evident that this demand is limited or 
multifarious, as are the circumstances of life. 

There is another grave matter of consideration, and that 
is, whether the vitality of man is not limited. Whether 
it is possible for all the organs with which God has en- 
dowed him, under any conceivable circumstances to be 
called into action in the same individual at the same time ; 
whether the active exercise of some of the organs is not 
to the direct loss of vitality and consequent growth in 
others. 

If it be so, we ma} 7 comprehend how it is that the 
standard of human intellect, even in exceptional cases, 
has never been exceeded. That the size, power, and ca- 
pacity of the human brain is as circumscribed, and as a 
lype as immutable as the standard of human height. But 
to the question. How do we reason % 

If you were asked which weighs the most, a barrel 
of ballets or a barrel of shot, there are few of you 
but would reply promptly, the barrel of bullets. How 



Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 8 

do you know % You or I never weighed one with the 
other. Some of you would reply, 1 know that a barrel 
of corn will make more than a barrel of meal, a 
bushel of wheat more than that quantity of flour, a 
gill of water over a barrel of steam ; therefore, the 
barrel of bullets would, if reduced to shot, make more 
than a barrel of shot. Consequently the barrel of bullets 
must weigh more than the same barrel rilled with shot. 
You have resorted to your experience for analogies — 
have compared the facts presented for enquiry with those 
in which your experience has given you knowledge of 
effects. 

Others among you, whose minds were better trained, 
would resort to principles, and would reply, that disinte- 
gration, disassociation increases volume. Therefore, vol- 
ume for volume the bullets would weigh the most. 

As to the cause why the volume of bullets weigh more 
than the volume of shot, you know quite as much as 
Descartes or Newton. Neither the attraction of Newton 
nor the vortices of Descartes were anything more than 
names for observed phenomena, and were not even sug- 
gestive of cause : and it is partly to point out to you the 
cause of weight, or why one volume weighs more than 
another, that I offer you these lectures. 

Underlying the answer of the educated man, and that 
which gives certainty to his deductions, is the immuta- 
bility of type. It constitutes the base of the human rea- 
son; and if, in > the course of his inquiries into cause, he 
should ever meet a fact which apparently militated against 
this principle, he would not be led into the error of ac- 
cepting it as an exception, but would patiently wait for 
more light. 

It is evident that the reasoning power of all men de- 
pends : First — Upon the size and power of the organs of 
the brain. Second — Upon extended or limited personal 
knowledge of phenomena. Third — Upon education or 
culture, which gives an enlarged knowledge of the expe- 
rience of others. Fourth — Upon the necessity or demand 
made upon the reasoning powers by the circumstances of 
life. And that the answer to, How we reason % involves all 
of these considerations. 

Beyond this, and to somewhat transform an oft-quoted 
sentence, "No pent up' 3 world "confines our powers, 
the whole boundless" universe "is ours." 

However true this may be in the speculative sense, it is 



4 Lectures on Physical Astrdnomy. 

not true in the rational sense. By the aid of that power 
which we term the imagination, we may pass beyond all 
visible phenomena; but if we would reason, we are 
" cribbed, cabined and confined " to the visible and tangi- 
ble realities which surround us. We cannot pass beyond 
them. Our knowledge of the finite bounded by the 
highest powers of the telescope and microscope — our 
sense of infinity commencing where they end. 

But if Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, are correct 
in the new philosophy, which they so zealously teach, 
and they are all men who by organization and education, 
life-long observation and extended knowledge, are entitled 
to be placed in the front rank of modern philosophers, 
the views I have given you require material modifications. 

As briefly as possible I will present the theory which 
they teach, or the gist of what I conceive it to be. 

That all of life, whether animal or vegetable, "Fauna 
oe Flora," has been derived from antecedent germs of 
lower form. That by process of "evolution" {unfold- 
ing) , ' k s urc ival of the fittest ' ' and ' ' natural selection, ' ' 
the present types of life are continually undergoing 
modification and change, and that by like process will 
continue to unfold. 

We may become as Gods, for there is no limit to this 
power of transition, and if the theory is well founded can 
be no^e. 

The necessity for special creations, and all Theistic 
ordinances, are ignored. 

Well we, who have been born within the sound of the 
Sabbath bell, have some old prejudices to conquer and 
some doubts which we desire to unfold. 

First — Theistic : So far as history and tradition may 
carry us into the past, every race of man, extinct or in 
existence, have had faith and have faith in an overruling 
power. The exceptions have been rare and are question- 
able. 

If man has a creative faculty, it has been derived from 
the design, order, and providence everywhere exhibited 
around him, no matter in what circumstances he may 
have been placed. 

His faith may be an instinct ; but we have no doubt 
that the faith or instinct of the young duck is the truer, 
notwithstanding the rational scientific old hen cackles in 
disapprobation. 



Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 5 

If the existence of God cannot be proven mathematically, 
it is because God is measureless and infinite. 

If we cannot rationally prove the existence of God, it is 
because the passions, emotions, perceptions or reason of 
man afford no base upon which, by synthesis, we can 
compare the Deity to anything earthly. 

But are there not higher faculties than those appertain- 
ing to the human reason \ 

It is certain that the emotions are to an extent inde 
pendent of human reason and generally dominant. 

In answer to the development theory. All of the 
present types of man — white, olive, brown, red and black — 
are as distinctive, as to type, as they were three thousand 
years ago. The progeny of intermarriage have either 
perished out by loss of seed-bearing power, or they have 
reverted to one or the other parent type. 

So far as the Flora is concerned, it is well known to 
horticulturists that, even where the same varieties are 
crossed, it always results in loss of seed-bearing power, 
in whole or in part. 

And there can be but little doubt, though not perhaps 
susceptible of demonstration, that reversion or decay in 
all crosses is the rule, when uncontrolled by circum- 
stances, with all life, animal and vegetable. 

And so far as the emotions of man are concerned. 
Who scorns not the lie he acts, the fraud he practices, 
the greed he daily exercises % Which of us in mental 
introspection, as the panorama of a past life has arisen 
before us, and some one act or deed come like a spectre 
in view, has not exclaimed with the lady of Mabceth, 
"Out damned spot," and prayed for Lethal waters? 
Spots, though not of scarlet dye, not the less loathsome, 
for they have not had the insanity of passion for their 
excuse. 

Are these the emotions of a higher, though, perhaps, 
fallen nature, or simply the survival of the fittest of 
those which we have derived from our monkey ancestors? 
]STo ! No ! Standing as I do now, upon the shores of 
that dark river which separates the quick from the shad- 
owless, and hearing, not far, the low stroke of the oars 
of that grim ferryman, by whose side we must all soon 
sit — I say, No ! 

Shattered, as may be the faith of many rational, intel- 
lectual minds, in all mere creeds, there lives deep down 
in the heart of the large majority of the human kind an 



6 Lectures on Physical Astronomy, 

undying faith in God. Bury it under mountain^ of rea- 
son, when the sparks of life cease to fly upward, and the 
falling ashes admonishes him that the drama of existence 
is closing — the faith that lies buried, frozen, dead, shall 
burst the bonds of reason with volcanic force, and he 
shall fly from the stings of his conscience and the voices 
of his reason, to God, and cry aloud, Weak, base, vile, 
fallen as I am, I am thy creature ; do with me even as 
thou deemest best. And if human reason may guide us, 
what earthly father looks not with yearning tenderness 
upon his erring and penitent child ? 

But I treat of inorganic matter, and have naught to do 
with the life or soul of man. But this much I may be 
permitted to say, and in all humility, that it appears to 
me that the man who can take a New England sandstone, 
stamped with the footprints of an extinct species of bird, 
and can by the aid of his reason tell the age in which it 
lived, its habitudes and form — can take the stone and 
mentally, rationally, see the bird, and then turn his eyes 
upon the universe with all its vast and sublime evidences 
of providence and design, and not see God, in a mere 
passion for singularity, falsifies and dishonors his high 
mission and that reason which God has given in per- 
fection to but one race, and which at the best is weak 
and frail — how weak and how frail, you may com- 
prehend, when I tell you now; that if I succeed in im- 
pressing upon you my own convictions — and I think. 
I will — I shall shatter and sweep away your belief 
in all received theories as to the relation which mat- 
ters bear to the medium — to motion, force, oscillation, 
heat and light — even as the spring freshet breaks up and 
sweeps away the ice on the winter bound river. And this 
should create no surprise. "The blind mole and the 
snail make more progress on the right road than the 
swiftest racer on the wrong. 5 ' 

What I have said in relation to the theories of Spencer, 
Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall, is said, not alone because 
the theory tends to shatter the very base upon which the 
human reason rests, and to sweep away those landmarks 
by which human thought has ever been guided — not alone 
because these theories are wholly wanting in the analo- 
gies— links necessary to their demonstration — but be- 
cause, if entertained by any large portion of the human 
family, it would rob millions of men and women of the 



Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 7 

dearest hope of life — the hope of a higher, nobler, purer 
existence hereafter. 

"There is a divinity which shapes our ends, rough 
hew them as we may," or there are faculties in the human 
brain which become like hungry and ever-unsated lions 
when the mental food is offered upon which they may 
feed. 

And he whose mission it is, or who is impelled by these 
faculties, starts on his journey into the regions of doubt, 
with high hope and exalted purpose. He goes forward 
with bounding step, and with a confidence which invaria- 
bly leads to defeat. He seeks to grasp the problems of 
life and the mysteries of nature, and they evade and 
baffle him. He casts himself against the walls of diffi- 
culty, as if by mere force of will he could overcome 
them. He climbs every elevation that presents itself for 
a look-out, from which to see the vast beyond. And, 
after years of struggle, baffled, bleeding, torn, he sinks 
back in dumb despair, his high purpose alone remain- 
ing — a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. 

Again he girds himself for his apparently hopeless 
journey, impelled by a power with which he in vain con- 
tends, no longer buoyant or hopeful, but groping his way 
with slow and uncertain footstep ; now following some 
shadowy and flickering light, now standing in the blackest 
darkness, now receiving direction from a gleam swift as 
the ligntning's flash and as evanescent — each elevation 
but the look-out to another beyond ; Alps upon Alps 
arise ; days, weeks, months and years roll by, and still 
he moves forward to a goal beyond. 

But all things yield to patient waiting and persistent 
effort ; the hour comes when he stands upon the higher 
Alps — the highest of the mountains of thought. Alone — 
embracing all in view that the mental vision may reach — 
who will charge him with arrogance and undue elation 
if he exclaim, This domain is mine, mine by right of 
discovery! — in his name and by his patent. Who would 
rob him of his wealth % Wealth not won in fraud — 
wealth that shall fall like the gentle dew of heaven, 
stimulating man to higher, holier and nobler aims. 

We who toil for gold — who make it the sole hope and 
pursuit of life — can have no conception of the joy and 
glory which the hour of success brings to the pioneer who 
blazes the pathway of thought for coming generations. The 
wealth for which we toil may be scattered in a decade ; 



8 Lectures en Physical Astronomy. 

and, like the waters of "Marah," may carry/and too 
often carries, bitterness and death, paralyzing all effort in 
him who may fall heir, making life purposeless and a 
burden. Oh, children of toil, you who, with sweat- 
crowned brows and grimy hands, pause from your labor 
to watch its passing pageant, let not the pomp and cir- 
cumstance, the glitter and luxury, create envy in your 
minds; — you see not the shadowy Nemesis who stalks in 
advance, parting the boughs and cushioning the pathway 
that leads to the Valley of Death. Yes! the price of 
freedom from labor is death — eleatli to {ivery sense, every 
faculty of the mind, every organ of the body which is not 
exercised.. 

And if nations and races have perished out, it has not 
be n alone from those dominant causes which I shall here- 
after point out, but as well from the moral paralysis 
which settles on nations in their prime, whose deep-seated 
roots have been laid in luxury and its kindred, want and 
vice. 

But, alas, we carry the maxims of ages and the edicts 
of God in our hearts and minds as ships carry lanterns, 
far in advance and full high aloft, but not for our own 
guidance, but that we may warn others. 

I treat of the revolution and motion of that medium which 
fills the universe ; of the resistance of matter which God 
ordained should be powerless and inert ; of force not per- 
sistent ; of heat and light springing from the resistance of 
matter to change of direction and suspension of motion ; 
of those vast durations of which we are made sensible and 
measure by the passage of the stars over the meridians. 
And oh, thou who reignest, God of order and law — thou 
who hast watched the germ, the growth and decadence of 
generations of stars, systems long passed away, stars 
which shone brightly when these which now gem the 
night with their radiance were not, what to thee is time — 
what can duration be to the Eternal God! 

We look with pitying wonder upon the ephemera, 
who sport their hour and cease to be ; yet in that brief 
hour they have had their ambitions, their wars and their 
loves. What more do we, what are we but the ephemera 
of the hour compared with these durations? 

In connection with the past history of our earth, it is 
with one of the least of these durations that I propose to 
treat — a year of the Sun, a single revolution in its orbit, a 
cycle of a little over a thousand centuries. 



Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 9 

Follow with me the measured tread of centuries of life, 
and with me comprehend dimly how and why all its 
forms perish out, why every race must die, every type 
perish. 

We shall comprehend the means by which every spot 
on this fair globe has alternately been within the frozen 
poles of rotation, and rested for a period under the burn- 
ing sun of the tropics. 

The revelations of God are written everywhere in let- 
ters of undying light ; in the courses of the stars, in the 
orbits of the planets, in the elongated ellipses of the com- 
etary orbits, in the disassociation of their matter, sheath- 
ing itself in the far heavens as with a sword ; in the heat 
and light which glows everywhere where matter resists 
motion. Upon the mountain top and in the valley; in 
the vapors which rise and the rain and dew which falls ; 
in the tides of the ocean and atmosphere ; in all that 
moves and has being — all subject to oscillation, motion 
and rest, life and death. Nothing persistent, everything 
intermittent, except the eternal voice of God "Let there 
be light," and the medium which obeys and moves, and 
the matter which resists and is compelled. These revela- 
tions are made to us, to all who have patience to study 
the signs and master the language. 

What are these signs % First in order is that incident 
of matter which Newton originally denominated a prop- 
erty — termed by him gravity (or weight), but which arises 
from and is simply the resultant of the diagonal force 
produced by the resistance of matter to change of direc- 
tion. 

Second in order is that incident of matter which New- 
ton denominated a property, characterized as inertia, or 
apparent disposition to continue its state of either motion 
or rest, and which is simply produced by the time re- 
quired either by the force of the medium or mechanical 
force to produce change in the normal direction, or direc- 
tion in which all matter is at any instant moving. Matter 
moves but as it is moved oind no further, whether in a 
medium or in void. 

Third — The various oscillations, revolutions, rotations, 
tides, currents, etc. , of matter — arising all from inertia. 

Fourth — The position of the magnetic poles of the 
earth, which are either the true poles of rotation, or in 
close proximity, coupled with the fact that a motion of 
libration synchronous with rotation and inclination of 



10 



Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 



the magnetic poles at forty-five degrees to the plane of 
the orbit, will produce an apparent motion analogous to 
the inclination of the apparent poles of rotation, with like 
parallelism of the poles, but of twentj 7 - two and one-half 
degrees inclination instead of twenty- three and one-half 
degrees, to the plane of the orbit: coupled with the fur- 
ther fact, that if we analyze a libration synchronous with 
a rotation, it will produce two motions directly at right 
angles with each other, one in the plane of the orbit, the 
other in plane with the poles of the ecliptic. And, start- 
ling as it may appear, if we suppose the earth to have 
such daily motions, they will produce all of the pheno- 
mena, inclination of the apparent pole, twenty -two and 
one-half degrees continued parallelism, etc., as now pre- 
sented, except the difference of a degree in inclination. 

Fifth — That if we conceive that all heat and light arises 
from resistance of matter to motion, and connect it with 
the fact, that at the moment of mid-day, this suspension 
of normal motion, assuming the velocity of the earth in 
its orbit to be 68,000 miles the hour, and the angular 
velocity of the equator by rotation at 1040 miles the hour, 
the suspension of motion directly under the sun amounts 
to and is constant at 508 yards in the second of time. 

The motion of rotation at midnight being in the direc- 
tion of the motion in the orbit, and at mid-day directly 
contrary to it. This suspension of motion has its greatest 
value at the magnetic equator, which no doubt is the true 
equator, and decreases continually to the magnetic pole ; 
and when we consider that the isothermal and geothermal 
parallels conform nearly to this theory, we shall be pre- 
pared to believe that the larger portion of the heat and 
light of the planets are not derived from the sun, but 
have their origin directly within the planets, and derived 
from and proportioned to the suspension of motion of the 
meridians and parallels directly under the sun, lessening 
as they become more remote, and the resistance decreases. 

The elliptical form of the orbits is derived from the 
inertia of the moving body and the translation of the sun, 
and the change in their inertia depending on the mobility 
or immobility of, their matter, or their capacity for con- 
traction or expansion, association or disassociation. The 
transverse axis of the atmospheric ellipse is always in 
the diagonal of a parallelogram of which the right lines, 
in which the earth is at any instant moving, forms the 
sides. The apsides of this ellipse moving synchronously 






Lectures on Physical Astronomy. 11 

with the motion of the earth in its oribt. is a type, there- 
fore, of the advance of the apsides of the ellipsis of the 
orbits of the planets, and suggestive, if not demonstrative, 
of the motion of the sun in its orbit*. 

But I have already wearied your patience, and must 
conclude this Lecture, trusting that I may soon afford 
you the opportunity of weighing the triad of Newton's 
forces— his Centripital, Centrifugal, and Projectile forces 
—with the simple theory which I suggest— of a medium, 
subtle and homogeneous, in eternal revolution, without 
change^ of diagonal force produced by the resistance of 
matter in its enforced association, accounting for all phe- 
nomena, except the life which God gave and takes away 



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